A Chicago man has been accused of jamming his fellow train passengers’ “annoying” phone signals as part of a morning ritual that lasted months before he was caught with his contraband, five-antenna jammer on Tuesday.

Gizmodo reports that 63-year-old Dennis Nicholl, a CPA, was ordered held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

The acoustically assaulted Nicholl reportedly got in trouble over the same thing in 2009.

But back then, the charge was just a misdemeanor. Authorities confiscated his jammer and destroyed it.

This time, according to the Chicago Tribune, Nicholl is being charged with a felony: unlawful interference with a public utility.

Investigators got tipped off by commuters who snapped photos of Nicholl with a clunky black device in his lap: an illegal device he imported from China, according to Cook County prosecutors and Chicago police.

Nicholl’s defense attorney said his client just wanted some peace and quiet on his commute from a North Side home in Chicago to the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, where he works as a financial analyst.

The Chicago Tribune quoted attorney Charles Lauer:

He’s disturbed by people talking around him.

He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn’t have any malicious intent.

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The Federal Communications Commission has gone after cellphone jammer vendors in the past: in 2012, the commission issued six citations to people who advertised and sold the devices on Craigslist.

In another case, the FCC fined another “cellphone cop” $48,000 for using a jammer on his daily commute around Tampa, Florida, in an attempt to stop fellow motorists from using their mobile phones while driving.

The FCC in August went after a company for the same thing, fining a telecommunications business $750,000 for blocking consumers’ Wi-Fi hotspots at convention centers around the country, thereby preventing people from using their own data plans to escape paying big bucks to the company – Smart City Networks – to use its Wi-Fi service.

A nice, quiet commute – one in which you’re spared from listening to phone yakkers on the train or driving on the same road as distracted jabberers – are both appealing prospects.

But not at the expense of other forms of public safety. After all, jamming can prevent emergency calls and hamper important on-train communications.

That’s why it’s called a public utility: communications serve the public.

When Nicholl was arrested by undercover police, he told them he used the jammer because he was “annoyed” by people using their phones on the train, that he knew the device is illegal in the US, and that he had his shipped from overseas.

One of his orders had actually been confiscated at the border, he told police.

That was good money, down the drain.

I don’t know what fines might be imposed on Nicholl this time around, but given the felony charge, it’s likely that he’ll have bought himself one hell of a pricey cone of silence!

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This guy was not very smart. I would have built it into my briefcase or better yet my computer
bag so it would not be seen and arouse suspicion. He needed a 007 lesson or two. All that said I hope they throw the book at him these devices are very dangerous because they indiscriminately block a huge chunk of spectrum and have a real potential to cause harm.

Are you sure the convention company didn’t block phone signals, forcing people onto their Wifi? Which I presume they charged for. Either that, or some phone company blocked their Wifi to force people to use their data plans. One or the other, that sentence is half of both. The first option seems most likely.

If you go to the linked article and then to the Marriott story, this is what they did:

“An investigation found that the allegation was right on target: employees of Marriott, which manages operations at the Gaylord Opryland, were using a Wi-Fi monitoring service to contain and/or deauthenticate packets sent to targeted access points and thus to disrupt access to individual hotspots.”

The company actually blocked devices from connecting to WiFi APs that were not their own, which they charged for access to. As I understand it, the technique involves spamming deauthentication packets for APs not on a whitelist, making clients attempting to connect think they were immediately disconnected. They were fined $600k by the FCC for it.

But I also suspect Nicholl jammed the other passengers’ phone signals because Nicholl enjoys having the sadistic power to disrupt the lives of others. Nicholl will not stop unless some force(s) more powerful than he can and will make him stop. You cannot make some people grow up.

This morning on CNN they showed video of a virgin airways had a couple of drunk women playing their music loud. When asked to turn it down, they refused and it ended up a fist fight. Same thing, different circumstances…

I ride the blue line in Chicago to and from work 5 days a week. For me, the train itself is so loud I can’t hear those people on their phones I can only see their lips move except when the train is at a stop. If only loud people on cell phones were the worst problem I encounter on the “L”. Many times, especially in the winter, I (and others too) have to move to another car because one or more homeless people smell really bad – I mean like falling in to the depth of an outhouse head first bad. At certain times especially during the rush hour getting on or off the “L” requires one or more confrontations with clueless people blocking the doorways, many of whom are headed to O’Hare to catch a flight and have luggage to assist in the blockage. Note to travelers: O’Hare is the final stop and there will be plenty of time for you to get off the train and make it to where ever you’re headed. Also, the last time the the blue line failed to stop at O’Hare the train crashed over the bump stops at the end of the tracks and partially climbed an escalator. Most of injuries were to those folks standing and blocking the doors. Also, by the time the train gets anywhere close to O’Hare it is usually pretty empty – so sit down. Having outlined some of the things that annoy me about riding the “L” I need to point out in some ways these annoyances are also security issues. People who have soiled themselves are disease risk. People blocking the doors make it unsafe to enter and exit. In addition, they help provide an area for pick-pockets and thieves to ply their trade. But then again I can sympathize with Mr. Nicholl’s discomfort. He may not be partially deaf as I am so he gets to deal even with more irritants – loud cell phone conversations. Now, I’m not condoning his actions because what he was doing is illegal. But I feel his pain. Note I work for a firm that is transitioning from network managed services to network security in downtown Chicago. Riding train is much more cost effective than driving, especially when the cost of parking get added in. So for whatever it is worth that my 2 cents worth.